Censoring Democracy

Following the publication on our website of an article about the firm which we believe to be building the Oxford University animal lab, SPEAK have received a High Court Order banning us from publishing any information whatsoever about the company.

This ban will be in place at least until 2pm on Thursday 19th October, when SPEAK will be back in the High Court to argue for a lifting of these draconian conditions.

As a campaigning group, SPEAK have always believed in disseminating the truth in order to enable people to make up their own minds about the rights and wrongs in the tangled web surrounding the Oxford lab build and the wider issues of vivisection. In press releases and articles to date, we have strived to provide factual information for consumption in the public arena – information, which Oxford University should have – but failed - to make available from the outset.

We at SPEAK believe they should be made accountable for these failings and the dissemination of misinformation, and it is for this very reason that we continue to monitor and challenge them to proper accountability. Our experience has been that access to real information is limited by powerful institutions, the media and the state, and that principle is certainly not one founded on the roots of democracy. As far as we are aware, the Oxford project is not and never has been protected under the Official Secrets act…it is merely protected by vested interests - a motley assortment of powerful officials in high positions from the government down.

From the outset, SPEAK has exposed the lies and secrecy surrounding the Oxford animal lab build, yet despite this, the University has managed to evade scrutiny. Having officially started life as a state of the art laboratory (for which the planning records mysteriously could not be found at the Planning Offices), the South Parks Rd development has (according to Oxford University’s changing goalposts) - during its pre-construction history - gone from being not-an-animal lab, an animal lab just for rodents (not primates), a research hotel par excellence, and a breeding and research facility for primates. The reasons for Oxford University’s ‘self-censorship’ on the subject of the lab are obvious: there would have been huge opposition to it by the police, the council, the Oxford public and beyond, to those campaigning against vivisection.

Determination amongst campaigners to continue to legally oppose the construction of the laboratory has been mounting, but the term ‘legal’ is constantly undergoing re-evaluation under the current government and we find that even the publication and distribution of an information leaflet is now considered harassment. This very government promised nearly 10 years ago that it would make inroads to improve the lot of the laboratory animal. It has done nothing but worsen it; yet more besides, it has ensured that those who helped vote them into power are now subject to the twists and turns of a system empowered by the infinitely broad sweep of a single law designed (and rightly so) to protect vulnerable individuals.

The Protection from Harassment Act, 1997, has now been appropriated by big corporations to provide them with a smokescreen behind which they can hide, conceal the truth, and thus stifle the possibility of any meaningful debate about the very serious moral and scientific issues that are at the heart of vivisection. Under the act, behaviours and activities, which would until recently have been legal and acceptable within a truly democratic context, can now be rendered illegal, and the injunctions with which SPEAK have been hit repeatedly provide ample evidence of this. This is a flagrant misuse of the British judicial system.

Logic suggests that if a building contractor advertises their services in the public domain, they do so because they have nothing to hide or be ashamed of; the company in question is a well known, relatively young and ambitious company and describes its approach as being driven by a vision based on honesty and integrity. That really isn’t too different from the approach that SPEAK has employed, attempting as we have to operate within a legal framework. Yet it seems that honesty is an asset only when one is towing the line. As far as we are aware, we haven’t broken any law; we are deeply committed to the tradition of freedom of speech in this country; it is a right that no individual should give up lightly.

We maintain that it is our right to exercise that tradition. There is no shame in speaking the truth; Oxford University themselves have said that they are "a bastion of free speech", yet their actions prove them liars and bullies, determined as they are to stamp out others’ democratic rights to speak freely about a highly emotive and contentious issue.

Whilst our priority has always been the battle to prevent the construction of Oxford University’s new animal lab, the campaign has evolved into something far bigger than we ever expected at the beginning. We have argued that it is the right of all animals not to be abused, tortured and enslaved; we have argued that vivisection is a flawed science and that Oxford University professors were involved in the Vioxx trials, which killed 2000 people; we have exposed the lies told by leading vivisectors at the university and we have highlighted the relationship that exists between the university and mercenary groups with appalling track records. We have done so because we believe that the public should know what goes on in the secretive world of the vivisection industry – as they rightly should in a democracy.

Whatever the outcome of Thursday's hearing, SPEAK fully intend to pursue the truth.

The fight will continue…

Disclaimer: The information on this website is for the purpose of legal protest and information only. It should not be used to commit any criminal acts or harassment.